Entries Tagged 'Controversy' ↓

Dressed for every occasion: FLDS women

I probably get asked this question more than any other one. “Harry,” a friend will say, “I’d like to dress my kids in FLDS clothing, but the group is so cut off from the outside world, I don’t know where to begin looking. What should I do?”

My answer? Go to their web site. Because of overwhelming demand for their modest, Western prairie settler-styled ankle-length dresses and rugged boys work shirts—due to the visibility created in the April raid by Texas authorities on the Yearning for Zion Ranch—the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is now selling a kids line, online.

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Bet she kept this clip off of her reel: Ayds diet candy commercial

What do you do when the name of your number one product, under which you’ve been selling your goods for decades, becomes a homonym for a deadly scourge?

That’s the foul question the makers of Ayds, an appetite suppressant, found themselves having to address 20 years ago. By that point, it had become clear that acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, was not going to be a flash in the pan—a temporary blip that the company could just ride out—but would be, in fact, the disease of the century, if not the millennium.

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Some of Barack Obama’s idealistic young supporters are taking endorsement of the candidate to an eerie new level, one familiar to fans of the 1960 film, Spartacus, above, says The New York Times: They’re informally adopting his middle name, “Hussein,” to refute right-wingers who “use it to falsely assert that Mr. Obama is a Muslim or, more fantastically, a terrorist.” (Thanks, Afi Scruggs, for the tip.)

(In the Stanley Kubrick classic, fellow slaves all identify themselves as “Spartacus” when Roman soldiers come looking for the rebellious leader.)

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It’s 3 1/2 in. by 11 in., available in either adhesive ($3.50) or magnetic ($5.50) form, from CarryaBigSticker.com.

Most parents, no doubt, were shocked by this outrageous moment on May 20th’s The Dr. Phil Show, above. It takes place at “The Dr. Phil House,” during their “Brat Camp” episode, when an agitated and frustrated 10-year-old, Noah, unexpectedly slaps his mom, Wendy, loudly, across her face.

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“Heh, heh…keep laffin’, lil’ white chillun…”: Uncle Remus and friends

You probably know that Disney, global makers of fine family entertainment, has a rich history of racist characters in its long legacy of films, TV shows, and other properties. But any list of the company’s nine most offensive creations, like this one from Cracked.com, that merely ranks Song of the South‘s “Uncle Remus,” above, at number 2 has got to be a doozy.

To a great extent, George Carlin is being remembered today for his “Filthy Words” routine, from his album, Occupation: Foole. In 1973, my radio station, WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM, played the bit over the air, resulting in a complaint and, ultimately, in a landmark Supreme Court ruling on free speech and the First Amendment. (“Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television,” on the 1972 album, Class Clown, is a similar piece. Its live recitation on a Milwaukee stage got the comic arrested in that year.)

To me, however, Carlin is possibly most significant in that he was the only white comedian I ever heard use the word nigger in a joke who actually made me really, deeply laugh. (The piece appears in his 1990 “Euphemisms” sketch.)

This is less a testament to his hipness or coolness—he had none, from my perspective—or any acceptance I reserve for white people using that word. All I reserve for any white person, without exception—including Carlin—is the suspicion of racism.

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While most mainstream media size up Hillary Clinton’s historic presidential campaign as a boost for feminism, University of Maryland School of Law professor and civil rights attorney Sherrilyn A. Ifill takes an opposing position: That New York State Senator’s rise to power has been, in fact, “very traditional.”

“In some ways,” says Ifill, “Mrs. Clinton, contrary to her public image, is a kind of throwback to the 1950s.”

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Now you don’t, now you see ’em: The Potter posters

Marketing is an immensely subtle practice today, exerting its influence over narrower and narrower realms of sensory focus, but this is absurd: Apparently, Warner Bros. marketing execs for 2007’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix decided that, for the movie’s IMAX version poster, Emma Watson needed something witchcraft couldn’t give her 14-year-old character, Hermione Granger: Bigger boobs. Continue reading →

In an on-air graphic, above, yesterday, FOX News referred to Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, as “Obama’s Baby Mama!”

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